


Lazy Days at the Mystery Shack

by mythomagicallydelicious



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Canon Divergence - s02e16 Roadside Attraction, Episode: s02e16 Roadside Attraction, Fluff, Gen, William Tell - Freeform, ax throwing, badasses hanging out, bonding fic, tense moments and teasing times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24188971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythomagicallydelicious/pseuds/mythomagicallydelicious
Summary: Wendy looks for a place to lay low and slack off for the day. Luckily, she knows just the place... but it may not be as empty as she thought, and it turns her day around from lazy after she finds that out.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Wendy Corduroy, Wendy Corduroy & Stan Pines
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	Lazy Days at the Mystery Shack

“TODAY IS ANOTHER DAY OF MANLY BONDING TIME! _ARE YOU READY, KIDS?”_

Wendy’s brothers cheer back at their dad, all shouting affirmatives. It was barely 8 a.m. and she was already getting a headache from all the yelling. Usually she could tune it out and go with the flow, but today it felt like too much.

“Actually, I’ve got plans. I’ll catch the next bonding sesh, how about that?”

“WHAT COULD BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN MANLY BONDING?” her dad asks. Despite it being in his most reasonable tone, everything her dad says is at full volume, his booming voice acutely agitating her growing headache. Her regular excuse probably wasn’t going to fly, today, with the big questioning eyes he was throwing her.

“Oh, you know. Gotta get that paycheck. Do some stocking while Stan’s on his road trip. He trusted me with the keys while the Shack is closed, so, honor and all that…” Wendy lets her sentence trail off and hopes her dad will fill in the blanks.

“THAT’S MY GIRL! RESPONSIBLE! GETTING PROMOTED AT WORK! VERY MANLY!” her dad jumps forward and gives her a giant bear hug, nearly crushing her. She’s used to these hugs though. She squeezes him back best she can with her arms pinned, and waits to be put down.

“Yep, manly Wendy. That’s what they call me,” Wendy mutters. “Anyway, time to go. Later, guys,” she calls as she grabs her flannel and her ax, running for the front door and out into the woods. She takes the path that matches the expectation of her heading to work, but once she knows she’s out of eyesight of her house, she slows. She kicks back next to a strong pine tree and pulls out her cell phone.

_28 MISSED TEXT MESSAGES_

“Ugggggghhhhhhhhh,” she groans, flipping it open and scanning the texts. Tambry was on a roll that morning. Or, well, late last night. It's hard to say whether she was texting all night or woke up early just to dish. Some argument broke out between Tambry and Nate, and for the first time ever, Lee didn’t have Nate’s back on it. Thompson had texted her about six times, asking her if she knew what was going on, or if they were still planning on hanging out that night.

Wendy deleted Thompson’s texts quickly to make room in her inbox. She had a feeling her phone would just keep buzzing one way or another. Sure enough, as fast as she could delete old messages about the argument, new ones poured in. Her phone could only handle 200 texts before it required her to delete old conversations in order to have room for incoming ones. And she had a few saved threads at the bottom of her inbox that she refused to delete, no matter what.

So she’d already forgotten half of the problem by the time she gets through all of Tambry and Nate’s spat, texts coming in from Nate and Lee separately also explaining their sides. Lee backed Tambry, and of all people _Robbie_ was backing Nate. The drama in her inbox just got more and more convoluted.

Finally she hit the power button on her phone, banishing the problem to be dealt with later, and to give her head a rest. She didn’t want to deal with the headache of friend drama on top of her baby headache already.

She started walking again, away from town, and deeper into the woods. She wasn’t really planning on going to work that day, but it was better than getting caught in the middle of the friend drama that would hopefully be forgotten by the end of the week, or getting swept up in another “manly bonding session” with her dad and brothers. No offense to them, but sometimes she just wanted regular bonding time with them… like a movie, or going to a concert. Something that didn’t require her dad to teach her “how to be a man.”

She just wanted a break to chill out and slack off in peace. The Mystery Shack being closed was suddenly the biggest blessing as she altered her course to pass by the thicker pine trees and collect pinecones on her way there.

Wendy _does_ have a key to the Shack, but Stan has been teaching her the finer points of lock picking, and she wanted to stretch her skills just a bit before settling into max-relaxation mode. She pulls out some pick, kneeling to get level with the lock, and has the gift shop door creaking open in no time.

Standing and brushing off her knees, she saunters in like she owns the place. For fun she rearranges a few of the displays, trading a few snow globes for the bobbleheads. She trades the little size marker on t-shirt hangers with each other so they’re all labeled wrong. Then she slips behind the counter and kicks her feet up by the register. She pulls the latest issue of _Avoid Eye Contact Monthly_ and begins reading.

After a couple hours of letting her mind wander and taking the quizzes a few times as herself and people she knows, her stomach rumbles. Wendy rolls the magazine back up and slips it under the counter, heading past the “DO NOT ENTER” sign on the door to the living area of the shack. She helps herself to raiding Stan’s fridge, fishing out the last can of peach pitt cola and leftovers from what she thinks was a spaghetti night.

Heating up a plate, she heads to Stan’s comfy chair. A spring keeps popping her in the back but she grabs an extra pillow and situates herself as comfortably as she can. Wendy picks up the remote and channel surfs while eating.

After a pretty good plate of spaghetti and about an hour of _Ducktective_ later Wendy’s feeling restless. She stands and stretches, arms high overhead before dropping them, rolling her neck along with the motion. Her boots clunked heavily over the wood floor back to the kitchen, dropping the plate in the sink and barely rinsing it so it wouldn’t suck _too_ bad to clean when they all got back. She paced around the kitchen a few times for good measure, humming a summer hit she’d heard on the radio last week. Her footfalls hit every catch and creak the wood could possibly make. But what did it matter? She was alone in the house.

Besides, she spent enough time at the Shack avoiding family time and ditching actual work to know how to step lightly if she needed to. Now, with the place to herself, and no one to yell at her for scuffing up the floors? As if they could get any more worn, anyway. She doesn’t care.

Which is why when she heard a loud _creeeeak_ from the direction of the gift shop, she was utterly taken by surprise. Was some jerk trying to break in while Stan was gone? Wendy was the only one allowed to do that. Soos has a key, of course, but his truck is loud enough to wake the dead, and also he’s on the road trip with Stan. No one else should be here.

There were distinct, heavy footfalls from that way, nowhere near what a gnome break-in sounded like. They skittered like rats and hissed and giggled at their findings. Wendy grabbed her ax and twirled it around once, taking on a defensive stance as she crept towards the other room.

_Whoever is in there, they’ll be sorry they messed with the Shack today_ , Wendy thought to herself, curling her left hand into a fist the way both Stan and her dad had taught her.

Kicking down the door between the rooms, Wendy jumps in screaming, ready to fight, ax poised to throw.

A man swirled to face her, a strange gun flashing up in her face. Wendy saw his right hand clenched tight in a fist, the same way Stan prepared one of his famous ‘hooks. Except Stan’s hands didn’t have six fingers. She froze, taking stock of the situation.

_Not an intruder. Just Stan’s recluse twin._

Wendy stood up straight, lowering her ax.

“Oh hey dude. What are you doing up here?” she asked, burying her previous worry under the cool act she’d pretty much perfected.

Ford looked at her incredulously, head cocking to one side as he studies her. But after a moment he, too, lowered his weapon, returning it to his hip holster.

“What am _I_ doing here? This is my house. The real question is why you are trespassing!” Ford said, his voice taking on a tone that grated on Wendy’s nerves. There was a self-righteous ring to it. Stan had taught her to recognize that sound. In customers, they usually were lousy buyers, but with enough flattery, you could usually get them eating out of your hand. Wendy wondered for a moment if Stan heard the same thing in his twin Wendy was hearing right now, before answering back.

“I figured I could hang at the Shack today, with everybody gone. Rearrange the snow globes the wrong way to annoy Stan. Get out of my place for a while.” Wendy shrugged and leaned against the wall, projecting nonchalance and casual authority, she hoped. “But for real, what are you doing up here? I thought you lived in the basement,” she adds, silently laughing to herself at the affronted look on Ford’s face.

Ford put his hands behind his back in a geeky teacher look, straightening up to look impressive. His offended look just added to the whole ‘ _I have done nothing wrong and I’m a jerk_ ’ look he has going on. But maybe that was just her loyalty to Stan bleeding through her opinion of the moment.

“As I said before, this is my house. I have important work to do in the basement. I do not “live there.”” Ford brought his hands up to do air quotes and just as quickly shoved them behind his back again. “And with Stan and the kids gone, I must ask you to leave the premises at once.”

“Aw, come on, man. I’m not hurting anybody here.” At this point, Wendy kind of wanted to test how well Stan had taught her to hustle people. The regular Gravity Falls citizen was too gullible to waste time trying on. But this guy. He would be a challenge. And she had nothing better to do.

“Still, I must insist—“

“Didja ever catch sight of the Hidebehind?” Wendy interrupted. Ford cut off midsentence and considered the question.

“Not exactly. Once, it revealed itself to me, but tthat was to intimidate me into stopping the rumors I’d spread about it—why?” Ford cuts off his story to narrow his eyes at Wendy.

Wendy folds her arms over her chest. “Rad. My dad and the other lumberjacks have been passing down warnings about it for years. Thought I heard it a time or two. I swear it pushed my brother Randy into a thorn bush once, but that may have been his own clumsy fault. Hard to say.”

Ford’s eyes lost some of their suspicious glare and gave Wendy a scrutinizing look. “Your father wouldn’t happen to be Boyish Dan Corduroy, would he?”

Wendy snorts, body folding in for a second as she laughs, flipping some hair behind her head and re-settling against the wall. “Yeah, no. Call him that and you’re asking for a fight. ‘Manly’ Dan Corduroy is my dad.”

Ford looked slightly embarrassed by his slip up, and at the fact that a teenager was laughing at him. “Ha, well, an understandable confusion. Last I saw him, he still went by that other moniker.”

“Dude, English is a language. Can you try speaking it?”

Ford frowned. “That was English. Now, back to the matter at hand. Clearly you do not have to work today, so if you would leave, that’d be most appreciated.”

Wendy knew she should’ve kept him going on anomalies. She could’ve moved to the stool and let him drone on forever while she relaxed.

_Well, at least now I can try other tactics_ , she thought.

She pushed herself off the wall to face Ford. “Alright, I’ll leave… if you can beat me at a game of William Tell.” Wendy grinned, pulling her ax back out and spinning it over her hand like a pro.

Ford considered her offer, a slight smile offsetting his calculating gaze.

“Hmm, my gun versus your ax?”

“Or Stan’s guns, to make it fair _and_ my ax.”

“I’m not letting you shoot at my head,” Ford said, an eyebrow arching over the cracked side of his glasses.

“Relax, gramps. There’s targets set up out back.”

“My name isn’t—“Ford started before Wendy interrupts again.

“I know, I know. I was joking. Yeesh, note to self: old guys don’t like being reminded they’re _old_.”

Ford grumbled a little more behind her, but all the same he followed her out onto the lawn and around back of the Shack, to a side where Stan didn’t take his tours. A little bit into the woods was a cleared space, and a perfect target practice with a bullseye painted on a few trees and everything.

Wendy eyeballed out the distance and dug a line in the dirt with her boot. “Alright, this is the line to throw or shoot from. You can go first.”

Ford stepped to the line and then glanced back at Wendy. “You are still a child. I’m not sure this is a fair game."

“Well, I’ve also heard you’re a huge nerd, so the playing field is probably as even as it’s going to get. And I’m a teenager, not a kid, Gramps.”

Ford grit his teeth at the nickname while Wendy laughed.

“Alright, ready Ford? Aim for the middle.”

Ford laughed out loud at that, momentarily startling Wendy. “I know how to play, Corduroy. I did not always “live under a boulder” as I believe the kids would say.”

“Uh, you mean rock?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Ford said absentmindedly as he lined up his shot. He fired and marked the middle of the target perfectly.

“Aha!” he nearly shouted, grinning triumphantly. He gestured for Wendy to take her turn as he stepped back, smirking.

Wendy tucked a strand of her behind her ear and lined up her shot. She let the ax whirl through the air, striking the dead center of the target, bisecting Ford’s scorch mark. She stood straight, a grin of her own on her face, proud of her throwing skills. At least some of those apocalypse training, manly bonding sessions, and lessons on being a lumberjack paid off for this moment: seeing someone be gobsmacked at her precision.

“Well,” Ford said as he recovered from the surprise at such a throw, “it’s a tie. Now will you leave? I have more work to get done.”

“Nope,” Wendy said, popping the _p_ obnoxiously.

“Why not?” Ford demanded.

“I said I’d go if you _beat me_ at this game. Tying isn’t defeat. So I’ll stay, thanks.”

“What? But you didn’t win.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t either. It’s all about the language of the deal. Loopholes are what I live for, Stan 2.”

In the middle of her taunting, Wendy saw Ford freeze and tense up, fists clenching at his side. He looked like a fight was about to break. Wendy backpedaled immediately, not actually wanting to start anything serious here.

“Hey, you okay there, Ford? I was joking, I’ll leave if you’re really that mad about it.”

Ford looked like he was chewing on something sour. Finally he shook his head and relaxed his stance. “No, excuse me. You just, um, reminded me of something unpleasant for a moment.” He paused and looked around, from the tree line, to the ax buried thirty feet away, to Wendy, and to the Shack. He continued with, “Actually, do you have any other interesting stories from the forest?”

Wendy thought about it. Despite that little hiccup at the end, she’d gotten Ford to come around, just a little bit, and have a human conversation. Stan would be so proud.

She only shrugged, however, and said, “Sure. Got any cookin’ skills? I’m dying for some real lunch. That spaghetti was not enough.”

Ford nodded and they walked back to the Shack talking.

Wendy considered the day a success. She escaped the “manly bonding time” at home. When she finally turned her phone back on, only the latest messages were coming through, and in a few of them Tambry explained that it was all a big misunderstanding. Wendy deleted the rest as they came without even reading them. She texted back to confirm a hang-out happening the next night and flipped her phone back shut.

And on top of everything else, she got some nice ax practice in and polished her con-artist skills. All in all, not a bad day. And the “jerk” vibe melted off of Ford the more he talked, morphing into the “Nerdy Badass” she’d heard Soos describe him second hand as in that horrible 3 a.m. call the other day. And “nerdy badass” was a label Wendy could get behind. They exchanged stories about the weirdness they’d encountered and fought, some Ford’s tales matching Wendy’s ‘horror stories of the lumberjack’ pitch for pitch.

She went home, throwing arm a little sore after they’d gone back out to practice at further and further distances, seeing how long they could go until dusk started setting in. Wendy bid Ford a good night, and good luck with whatever business he had in the mysterious basement.

She had two more free days of summer before she had to go back to her actual job and probably fix all the stuff she’d moved around for kicks. She was determined to enjoy it. Laid back and relaxed. But a day of strengthening skills outside of her dad’s drill instructor voice was a fun way to spend at least one day.

**Author's Note:**

> I was cleaning my apartment and found a stack of notebooks with dozens of stories inside, and this was one of them!! Mostly written, just needed some tweaking and rephrasing. Made in like 2017 or 2018 so don't judge me if it's a downgrade in quality lol. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!! Let me know what you thought :D


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